Biles embarks on comeback trail
Champion entered in first competition since winning four gold medals at 2016 Olympics
As she returns to the town where she was born 21 years ago, Simone Biles feels stronger, more confident and more accomplished than she did in 2016, when she was the best gymnast in the world before taking a twoyear break from competition after the 2016 Olympics.
Biles, 21, of Spring will chalk up Saturday in Columbus, Ohio, for the annual USA Gymnastics Classics event, the first step on what she hopes will be a return trip to the world championships this fall and another Olympic Games in 2020 in Tokyo.
In a 10-minute interview with reporters Friday in Columbus, Biles said she continues to be pleased with her progress alongside coaches Laurent Landi and Cecile Canqueteau-Landi and believes she is a stronger gymnast than the 19-year-old who won four gold medals and a bronze at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
“I would probably beat her,” Biles said of her 2016 doppelganger. “I feel like I have a stronger mindset, and I’m not as nervous.
“For this particular competition, I still have a lot of nerves I have to get out in the training that we have to come, but I am in a better place. I trust my body more and I trust my gymnastics more, so overall I’m in a better place.”
She said she also feels better and is happier with her appearance.
“At the Olympics, we were literally so strong. We were like bulldogs,” she said. “Now I’m a little bit leaner, a little bit older, and I feel like I look better. I feel healthier because I don’t have as much stress.”
Added floor and vault
Biles initially planned to compete only on balance beam and bars but decided to add floor and vault as her training with the Landis progressed more rapidly than expected.
Laurent Landi helped coach Dallas-area gymnast Madison Kocian to a silver medal on uneven bars at Rio, and Biles said she has improved what was her weakest event under his supervision.
“Some of the skills I’m doing I couldn’t do before, and now I’m doing them, so that’s kind of exciting for me,” she said. “I’m really excited to showcase bars because it was one of my weaker events, but I think we’ve made a lot of improvements ... and hopefully more to come.”
She added, to laughter, “I don’t want to chainsaw every bar in the country anymore.”
With her Olympic legacy secure, Biles said she will try to limit self-expectations and focus more on enjoying the sport.
“I don’t have to be so nervous about walking on eggshells in what we did, because we already have achieved what we did in Rio. We’re already Olympians,” she said. “Before we were nervous because everything you did could mess up everything you wanted to do.”
Biles returns to a sport considerably changed since the Rio Games. Martha Karolyi is no longer the overseer of the women’s program, and the gymnastics in the United States is in a considerably different place in the wake of the Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal.
Biles since Rio has acknowledged that she was abused by Nassar under the guise of medical care, and she acknowledged that she used medication to treat attention deficit disorder after her medical records were leaked without her permission.
Took some family time
She also competed in the television show “Dancing With the Stars” and for the first time in a life structured around training and competition, took time off to celebrate birthdays and vacation trips with her family and with her boyfriend, former University of Michigan gymnast Stacy Ervin.
In the interview provided by USA Gymnastics, Biles also said she will be joined by family members in Columbus, where she was born in 1997 before moving to Texas with her adopted parents, Ron and Nellie Biles.
Biles did not discuss routine plans but said earlier this year she has added a forward tumbling element to her floor exercise to fulfill a new requirement in the International Gymnastics Federation scoring system and an additional half-turn to one of her opening moves on balance beam.
As for fans’ expectations Saturday, she said, “I hope they keep in perspective that I haven’t competed in more than two years and I am coming back, and we’ll see where it goes from there.
“I want to go out there and be Simone and have fun and do gymnastics like I love to do and like I used to.”